Coffee Shop
by flawlesspeasant
Summary: As she adjusts after newly moving to to the city of Seattle, Jo begins to wonder about the nicknames that the attractive barista she sees every morning before work, keeps leaving on her coffee cups. Oneshot.


**This was based off a prompt I received on tumblr, and I thought it was cute enough to share on here.**

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Jo laid the tips of her fingers against her forehead and pushed back as the wind blew and caused loose strands of her silky, chestnut brown hair to cluster around her eyes and cheeks. She ran her fingers down the length of her hair and shook it in order to get it to fall correctly. Coming from Massachusetts to Seattle was different, in more ways than one. But the biggest difference that Jo noted was definitely the weather. In Massachusetts, she was used to stepping out with a jacket when it was in the middle of September due to the everlasting chilly nature that ravaged the east coast during the fall. In Seattle, however, it wasn't chilly enough to warrant a jacket just yet but the darkening overcast clouds warned her not to leave the house without one anyway.

"Thank you," she politely mumbled to the heavy-set woman that held the door open for her.

With her head geared towards the ground as she thumbed through her wallet, Jo breezed through the door and left from the humidity of the outdoors to the cool air-conditioned atmosphere of the coffee shop. She felt the hairs on her arms stand up with the change of temperature and a shiver rocked her body, but she sauntered over to the same spot she stood in for the last two weeks. One thing about Seattle she came to like was the fact that she was beginning to settle into a routine. Although she had only been living in Seattle for two weeks, she already had a daily regimen. Every morning she'd wake up, shower, head to the coffee shop and head to work. It was a simple routine but it was a routine nonetheless and for a girl that never had much of a routine in her life, to Jo, it was a big deal.

She pulled a twenty dollar bill from her wallet before stuffing it back into her purse and lifted her head as she folded her arms across her chest to patiently wait for someone to come take her order. She wasn't surprised when she saw a man wearing a jungle green polo shirt behind the counter, snapping the lid on a glass blender. His t-shirt was loose-fitting, his blue jeans were neatly buckled and on his waist, he wore clean white sneakers and his sandy brown hair was unruly, contradicting his clean-cut appearance. He was the same worker that she had seen for the past thirteen days on her morning coffee runs and she synthesized that he worked the morning shifts here. Today was the day she would look at his name tag, if he was wearing one.

Behind the counter, Alex locked the lid on the blender and leisurely pushed the button to chop up the ice he shoveled inside of it. Once the ice was completely grinded up, he popped the cap off again and poured the light brown mixture into a clear cup. As usual, he snapped the lid and slipped a green straw through the hole at the top of the lid. He picked the black Sharpie marker up off the counter and scribbled a name on the cup before turning around and walking it to a blonde girl that was standing at the waiting counter.

"Caramel delight, no whipped cream, shot of expresso, here you go." He handed the woman the cup and gave her a friendly, strictly-business kind of smile. The woman mumbled a quick "thank you" to him, scooped her cup up and headed out the door as Alex nodded and headed back to the service counter to wait on his next customer. As soon as he looked up and saw who it was that was standing in front of the counter, he glanced at the digital clock on the register and smirked as he realized that she was right on time. Every day, for the last two weeks, this exact same girl came into the shop at precisely 7:34. It was 7:35 now, so she was about a minute late, but on time nonetheless. Though he didn't have to, due to the fact that he had it memorized, he put a professional look on his face and opened his mouth to speak to her anyway.

"What can I get you?" He asked. Jo tucked her hair behind her ears and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out, Alex spoke again. "A tall iced coffee, four creams, three sugars, extra ice cubes on the inside, whipped cream with a mocha drizzle on top?"

Jo stood, her arms folded neatly across her chest with the words she was going to spoke frozen in her throat as they were stolen away from her. An innocent smile crept across her face as she tried to form a new sentence to speak to him but her eyes narrowed instead. For the first time in the thirteen mornings she had spent at this coffee shop looking at this man, she took a good look at him and looking at him made her cheeky smile turn genuine.

"Actually," she started. "I want caramel drizzle on top."

"Oh," Alex said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "You're changin' it up on me?"

"Yeah well…I like to keep people guessing."

Alex laughed and nodded his head just once. "$3.36." He took the money as Jo handed it across the counter and made her change. "I'll get that made for you."

"Thanks," Jo nodded.

She carelessly stuffed her change into her purse and walked down to the waiting line, although there were no customers in line to be served behind her. She tilted her head as she watched Alex skillfully mix her coffee without thinking about it. She pondered how long he must've been working here to be so skilled.

In truth, he had only been working at the coffee shop for less than three months. It wasn't long, but he was beginning to fall into his own routine. He was getting so bored with his job that he, in fact, had planned on putting in his two weeks' notice. That was three weeks ago, though. That was before a skinny brunette stranger with the most haunting bright brown eyes and lustful lips had wandered into the shop. If he had quit, he was unsure if he was ever going to be able to see her again…and that in itself was enough to make him stay.

Alex picked up the marker again, jotted a name down on the side of the plastic cup and turned back towards her. "Here you go," he mumbled and took an extra moment to stare at her, admiring the way her hair had a subtle reddish tinge to it in the right light.

"Thank you," Jo replied with a sweetness in her tone.

When she grabbed the cup from him, her fingertips grazed the back of his hand and it almost felt as if she had been electroshocked. Her eyes snapped up, met Alex's and she decided to let her fingers stay on his hand for a few more moments as the electrical chemistry pulsated through both their bodies. When their eyes met, the corners of her lips turned up into a smile and she finally decided to pull her hand away so she wouldn't be late for work.

"Have a nice day," she nodded at him and turned around to leave.

Alex rested his elbows against the counter and watched her walk away with a slight somberness to his mood. He enjoyed seeing her; he always did. But just as much as he enjoyed seeing her come in and hearing her voice every day, he also hated it. He knew that their interactions would be short and sweet and once she was gone, it'd be another 24 hours before he could see her again. He sighed and let his eyes roam her while she walked towards the door. Her hair fell in gentle waves to the middle of her back and blew so gently with the wind that it reminded him of corn silk. Although she was thin, her body had a curvature to it and he liked the way her legs looked even when they were stuffed in a pair of jeans and shortened by combat boots. She was arguably the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and he was stuck making her coffee. He watched her long enough to see her raise her cup up and just as he began to turn to go back to work, he was interrupted by the fact that she turned around to face him again.

"Hey!" Jo walked briskly back to the counter and demanded Alex's attention as she held out the cup he had just passed off to her.

Alex stood up straight and waited to hear her complain about something, because that was usually the only reason customers ever came back. A few of them would come back just to talk to the handsome man that had fixed their coffee but not much. And he figured that this particular woman was much too beautiful to even be single, let alone wanting to talk to him about something other than her coffee. He raised his eyebrows to let her know he was listening.

"What, did you memorize my order by not my name?" She held out her cup and motioned towards the black scribbles that were on the side. The scribbles were partially illegible but Jo was able to make out that it was a circle with five rays sprouting out the sides to make a sun. Alex grinned, admitting the guilt to writing another name on the cup but not the guilt of forgetting her name. He hadn't forgotten her name. He knew that her name as "Jo". She told him that on the first day she came into the shop and he had been holding onto it ever since. He didn't think she noticed that for the three days, he stopped writing "JO" on her cups and started writing something different with every day. "You can memorize my entire order, but not two letters?"

"I didn't forget your name…Jo."

"So then why haven't you used it?" She took a sip of the coffee and smiled at him so wide that he caught a glimpse of her perfectly aligned white teeth. "Yesterday it was a crown, day before that it was a sun and now today it's a smiley face. What, does my name change with your moods?"

"Something like that," he admitted.

"You draw pictures for all your customers?"

"Only the ones I like."

"Oh…" Jo raised her eyebrows. "So you like me? Is that why you've been calling me 'sunshine' and 'smiley'?"

Alex chuckled, clearly embarrassed. "…So you've been able to decode my pictures and figure out the nicknames I give you…I'm not as smart as I think I am."

"Well…" Jo smiled. "I haven't exactly decoded the crown yet, so there's that," she winked.

"That's just one you're gonna have to decipher on your own." He picked up a white washcloth and began cleaning up the dried caramel from the counter. "Let me know when ya figure it out."

"And how will I do that?" Jo shifted her weight to her other leg and lifted her chin a bit, giving him a challenging look. For the first time in a long time, she felt a flutter across her stomach and the overwhelming urge to smile.

"I'll be seeing you tomorrow, won't I? 7:34 on the dot?"

"…Something like that," she nodded in agreement. "See you tomorrow…" she hesitated, squinting her eyes to get a better look at the name on his name tag. "Alex."

"See you tomorrow." He nodded once and went back to his job of cleaning up the counters, satisfied with the fact that he spoke more than a two words to his most favorite customer. It still wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to tell her that although he liked seeing her every morning, he'd much rather see her at night, in a restaurant or at a movie theater. He wanted to get to know her beyond the smiles that made him call her smiley, the brightness she brought to his day that made him call her sunshine and the beauty that made him call her "princess." But he would take this conversation and he would savor it for 24 hours in hopes that tomorrow, maybe he'd have the balls to progress it a little further.

As Jo walked back through the doors that she entered through, she lifted her coffee cup up yet again and admired the lopsided eyes and the squiggly line that made the face's smile.

She couldn't wait until tomorrow morning either.


End file.
